Google and Amazon investor John Doerr reveals the 'secret sauce' of his blockbuster investments

Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr is known for backing
some of the biggest entrepreneurs in tech, including Larry Page,
Sergey Brin, and Jeff Bezos.

Some may view it as luck that Doerr picked correctly that Google,
Amazon and Intuit would go on to become the biggest tech company.
But Doerr has had great practice picking winners in a
crowded market.

"It's pattern matching. That’s the secret
sauce," Doerr said on-stage at Tech Crunch Disrupt in San
Francisco on Tuesday.

The DNA of the founders he chose decades ago is
present in entrepreneurs today. The entrepreneurs are just
younger than before because there's more opportunities to
get into tech, Doerr said.

Those same opportunities, though, have created crowded
markets full of entrepreneurs. Doerr is most excited about a
healthcare startup that's still in stealth mode and picked the
founder out of the crowd. He chose her in the same way he
knew to invest in Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Doerr said. It's
matching the pattern.

"The character of the team. Knowing whether or not I'd like
to be in trouble with her and her team. The boldness of the
vision. The focus on the execution," Doerr said. "That's how."

During the same talk, Doerr was excoriated on Twitter for an
insensitive quip about diversity at Kleiner Perkins, when he
said, "We have two new partners who are so diverse that I
have a challenge pronouncing their names." He was referring
to Muzzammil Zaveri and Swati Mylavarapu. He later
apologized:

@kimmaicutler Friends, my apologies. It was an unfortunate joke that was not funny. I have deep respect for my partners Swati and Muzzammil.